Tawnya Dawn Knight (3 of Clubs, Kansas)

The Deck

The Deck explores the unresolved murder of 15-year-old Tawnya Dawn Knight from Kansas, whose remains were found in a soybean field six months after she was reported

Key takeaways

• The initial dismissal of Tawnya as a runaway was based on unreliable information, including a phone call that may have been fabricated or misunderstood.
• Critical evidence such as phone records were not preserved, possibly due to early assumptions about the case being a simple runaway scenario.

Main topics

• Cold case investigation
• Missing person disappearance

Notable quotes

"If that search was not called off, I think they would have found Tanya's remains."

Conclusion

The case of Tawnya Dawn Knight remains unsolved after nearly three decades. Despite new

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) What if finding the missing person didn't answer the mystery? What if it only made it stranger? In a new AudioChuck limited series, The Truth About Natalie, host Sean Kipe investigates the disappearance and death of 27-year-old Natalie Jones. What starts as a missing person's case uncovers allegations of abuse, hidden secrets, conflicting evidence, and one haunting question. Was Natalie the victim of a tragic accident? Or did someone have a reason to silence her? Listen to The Truth About Natalie now, wherever you get your podcasts. Our card this week is Tanya Dawn Knight, the three of clubs from Kansas. The search for answers in Tanya's case began after her remains were found by a farmer on June 7th, 1997. It's a search that has been ongoing for decades. But when Detective Natalie Bright of the Johnson County Sheriff's Office picked up Tanya's file in 2020, she realized that the reason the case was cold might be because of all the time lost early on and the missteps of those who came before her. Speaker 5 (1:14) What is that like when you come into that? I Speaker 4 (1:16) was Speaker 5 (1:17) pissed. Speaker 4 (1:19) You see, Tanya had been reported missing six months before her remains were found. But at the time, law enforcement wrote her off as a runaway. Sure, they looked around some. But when someone said that they'd gotten a phone call from Tanya, they were quick to call off ground searches that they had planned for the very field that she would later be found in six months later. Coincidence? Or a strategic misdirection that played right into old tropes? This case has layers. And Detective Bright is going to keep peeling them back one by one until she gets to the truth of what happened to Tanya Dawn Knight. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. Speaker 4 (2:38) The bean field in Spring Hill, Kansas, where Tanya Knight's remains were found, was a couple of acres in size. It was situated alongside Highway 169 and partially bordered by the local cemetery. It was her skull that the farmer found first, and further searches by authorities uncovered more remains. Not buried, but concealed deep in some hedges along the edge of the property. And despite how decomposed they were, Detective Bright told us investigators at the scene had a suspicion of who these remains belonged to. Speaker 2 (3:12) I think they had a good idea that was more than likely Tanya. She was the only missing person case out there that I'm aware of, that I think that they were aware of. And when they immediately found her remains, they identified her through dental records. Speaker 4 (3:30) 15-year-old Tanya Dawn Knight had been reported missing six months earlier, back on December 8, 1996. It was her father, Frank, and her stepmother, Judy, who contacted the police after she didn't return home from a sleepover at a friend's house the day prior. The police entered Tanya's information into the National Crime Information Center, listing her as a runaway. But they still checked around town some themselves. There was an even bigger physical search planned for her. But at the last minute, the search was called off. Speaker 2 (4:06) Tanya's step-uncle went to the Spring Hill Police Department in person and reported to officials that he had spoke with Tanya on the phone. And he told them that Tanya was fine and that she was going to come back home as soon as her family life was better. As soon as she got along with her stepmom, she was going to come back. Speaker 4 (4:30) Tanya and her stepmother didn't always get along, and the police seemed quick to accept this explanation for her absence. Family drama, she'll be back kind of thing. Speaker 2 (4:39) When he reported that, they were going to do a search for Tanya in the field over there by the cemetery. Because of what the step-uncle reported, that search was called off. Speaker 4 (4:53) The idea that she had run away just never added up to her mother, Lori. And she conveyed those feelings to law enforcement. Speaker 6 (5:02) I did have a conversation with them. And I said, you know, she's not a runaway. For one, she didn't take no clothes. She didn't take no money. You know, she didn't take any of that. If you're going to run away, you take some of that stuff with you. Speaker 4 (5:16) Lori stayed in Arizona where she lived, just on the off chance that she was wrong and Tanya would turn up there. Tonya had moved to Kansas about a year and a half before she went missing to live with her father, stepmother, and stepsister. Speaker 6 (5:29) She started doing real good in school, a lot better than she was out here in these schools. And she seemed to like that school and, you know, getting involved in the activities. Speaker 4 (5:40) Despite the long distance, the mother and daughter regularly kept in touch. Speaker 6 (5:45) She would, you know, tell me what she'd done lately, like went to spend the night with a friend or, you know, she did get a part-time job at one of the grocery stores there in Spring Hill. And she was, she'd had her Speaker 4 (6:02) driver's permit working on that. The thing that Lori kept coming back to is that they called off the search because apparently Tanya had called someone and said that she had problems with her stepmother and she was going to, like, lay low. But if that were true, Lori knew that Tanya's first call would be to her. She knew if Speaker 6 (6:22) she was having a problem back there with her dad or anybody, all she had to do was call me or her grandparents out here and we would be on our way to get her. So she wasn't a runaway. And I think parents know their kids better than the authorities. But for six months, you know, it was just, you know, kind of sitting and waiting to see if we heard anything or, you know, try to contact the authorities to see if they'd heard anything yet. So it was, it was pretty upsetting because you worry. Speaker 4 (6:58) At the end of those six months, the very field that they were supposed to search was now a crime scene, which the smaller Spring Hill PD turned over to the larger Johnson County Sheriff's Office. Their texts were sifting through to collect what was left of Tanya. Speaker 2 (7:16) If that search was not called off, I think they would have found Tanya's remains. And I think we would have been in a better spot than we are today. Speaker 4 (7:24) I promised you that this case has layers, didn't I? Speaker 2 (7:28) When Tanya's remains were found in June, that's when the step-uncle said, I lied. Speaker 4 (7:34) Well, only partially lied, he clarified. He really did believe the call happened. It's just he didn't get the call. His co-worker's daughter, who knew Tanya did, but she didn't want to get involved, so he stepped forward, thinking that he was helping. Law enforcement obviously interviewed the girl, but it's not like things got cleared up. Yes, she said, she really had gotten a call, and she didn't want to come forward herself, so she... told her father, who then told Tanya's step-uncle. But the details of the call were shaky, not the kind of things anyone should feel confident enough to call off a search for a missing teen. According to the friend, Tanya said all this stuff about wanting to stay away till her home life got better. Except, let's be clear here, Tanya never even said her name on the call. This friend thought that whoever it was sounded. like Tanya. Now, I'm not saying that she didn't get the call, but we're dealing with teenagers here. It's possible she was pranked. Another part of dealing with teenagers is they apparently ask zero follow-up questions. Who was Tanya with? Friend doesn't know. Can't say. Though Tanya mentioned being in Overland Park a little over 30 minutes away. So you might be thinking, like, okay, well... You know, where exactly did she call from? Let's just pull those records. It's 1996 when this took place. We're not talking about the dark ages. But Detective Bright told our reporter, Annie Roderick-Jones, that phone records are not part of the case file that was passed down to her in 2020. Speaker 2 (9:13) You